Skip to main content

Q-Free highlights the advantages of barrier-less parking

Q-Free is highlighting the power of ‘cross pollination’ in Bordeaux and its smart parking exhibit on its stand at World Congress is a prime example. The system uses ANPR to record vehicles entering and exiting a car park without the use of a barrier and offers cashless payment for account holders.
October 8, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Jenny Simonsen of Q-Free with the smart parking demo
108 Q-Free is highlighting the power of ‘cross pollination’ in Bordeaux and its smart parking exhibit on its stand at World Congress is a prime example. The system uses ANPR to record vehicles entering and exiting a car park without the use of a barrier and offers cashless payment for account holders.

According to the company, there are significant savings for the car park operator as there is no need to install and maintain raising barriers, ticket dispensers and, potentially, cash payment machines. In terms of enforcement, a change in legislation similar to that needed for free-flow tolling, will be required.

One such system has been installed in Sweden at the 1,400 space car park at the Ericsson Globe Indoor Arena where large numbers of motorists want to exit at the same time after an event has finished, causing queues at the payment machines and barriers. The new system not only allows drivers to enter and exit quickly without having to wait for a ticket to be issued/validated or the barrier to rise, it also allows them to leave without paying, to avoid queueing at the payment machines, and to do so online within 72 hours.

Those who wish to pay at the time can do so using one of 21 touchscreen payment kiosks and their registration details are instantly deleted. Data regarding the number of vehicles exiting the car park is also available to feed into the traffic control system.

Related Content

  • August 9, 2017
    Make it easier to pay for parking, says AA
    Seven out of 10 (70 per cent) UK drivers say they are more likely to drive by rather than park in a bay which requires payment by phone, according to a survey by the Automobile Association (AA). The AA-Populus Driver Poll of more than 16,500 members carried out last month, found that cash is still the preferred option for those looking to pay for parking. Despite their preference to use cash, around two thirds of drivers say that it is often a challenge to find the right change for parking, which may be due
  • June 11, 2015
    Machine vision’s image of road management’s future
    Q-Free’s Marco Sinnema looks at how the commoditisation of high-quality vision-based solutions is widening their application. Machine vision technology’s entry into the ITS/traffic management sector has followed a classic top-down path. This is unsurprising given the extremely demanding performance criteria which are the standard in its market of origin, manufacturing processing. Very high image qualities combined with frame rates often in the hundreds per second range resulted in vision systems with capabi
  • February 1, 2012
    Positive incentives an alternative to road user charging?
    The Netherlands has been looking at incentivising rush-hour avoidance. The intention is to better understand road users' motivations and find alternatives to congestion charging. Something significant needs to happen if we are to adequately address the traffic congestion and other issues caused by the ever-rising numbers of vehicles on our roads. Congestion or distance-based charging is seen as one way of managing demand and raising revenue for improvements to transport infrastructure. However, charging is
  • January 10, 2013
    Need for simpler urban tolling solutions
    A common assumption, even amongst informed observers, is that there’s but a handful of urban charging schemes in operation around the world and scant prospect of that changing any time soon. Larger city-sized schemes such as Singapore, London and Stockholm come readily to mind but if we take a wider view and also consider urban access control and Low Emission Zones (LEZs) then the picture changes rather radically. There is a notable concentration of such schemes in Europe but worldwide the number is comfort